Toshiba ships 43nm solid-state drives
updated 02:40 pm EDT, Wed August 5, 2009
Toshiba Ships 43nm SSDs
Toshiba at mid-day said it was shipping its first solid-state drives based on a smaller, denser 43 nanometer manufacturing process. These early examples are going directly to computer builders and should give them both added capacity and speed. In 2.5-inch form, drives now come up to 512GB in capacity and move data at read speeds up to 230MB per second and writes up to 180MB per second; 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities are also available.
Multiple 1.8-inch drives for ultraportables are also shipping and come in capacities of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB both in full enclosures, for common systems, as well as in raw, unprotected modules meant to be a permanent part of the notebook. Even with the size reduction, they maintain the same speed as the physically larger drives.
All of the drives connect to a SATA or SATA II interface. Toshiba hasn't named the companies receiving the drives or said whether the SSDs will be available separately.
